Chickens living the dream in caravans

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This was published 9 years ago

Chickens living the dream in caravans

By Carolyn Webb

The chooks on Emma Brown’s South Gippsland farm live cushy lives. They're let out daily to roam the lush hills of Korumburra, and at night they cosy up together - in caravans.

Retired baby boomers love caravans, and they're also the latest trend in free range poultry.

Emma Brown with her free-roaming chooks.

Emma Brown with her free-roaming chooks.Credit: Jason South

Twice a week Mrs Brown moves her caravans so her "girls" can feast on fresh pasture. But not too far - the chooks, with limited brainpower, are prone to plonk down where the caravan used to be.

Moving means pasture can regenerate with the help of the chooks' manure that has dropped through the caravan's mesh floor.

Dianne Moore, a spokeswoman for the Free Range Farmers' Association, said poulterers had started to try cheap, easy-to-set-up caravans in the past five years.

Association guidelines require that hens are free to roam during daylight hours in a ratio of a maximum 750 hens per hectare, with access to a shelter housing less than 1000 hens.

Mrs Brown's farm, Glorious Googies, has four caravans housing 200 to 300 chooks each. Each flock has access to half a hectare, giving a ratio of 400 to 600 chickens a hectare with fresh grass.

Mrs Brown, a former nurse and mother of two boys aged 2 and 7, started Glorious Googies on her 60 hectare property a year ago.

She wanted to "extend the idea of backyard chooks". "They're just happy little creatures. They're friendly and I guess a lot of them deserve a better life. All the chooks in cages just horrify me."

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Her 1000 hens now lay more than 600 eggs a day. She plans to have 1600 hens by the end of the year, in eight caravans.

According to the Australian Egg Corporation, free-range eggs' share of the grocery retail market, by volume, rose from 20 per cent in 2007 to 38 per cent in 2012, the latest year available. Caged eggs' share, in the same period, dropped from 74.9 per cent to 51 per cent.

Mrs Brown says many brands are falsely labelled free range. "A lot of the time the hens are in a shed and not allowed access to outside. I think people are after the genuine thing."

She sells the eggs in Gippsland eateries and farmers markets, and at the Substation market at Newport, near Williamstown.

She claims the rye grass, clover and bugs the chooks eat, combined with grain feed, and their health from wandering, add to the eggs' value. "My customers tell me they're the tastiest eggs, and the colour of the yolks is beautiful."

From word of mouth through the markets, Glorious Googies was recommended for a curious stall at the inaugural Melbourne Truffle Festival at Caulfield racecourse this weekend.

For the past five days, 80 half-dozen cartons of Mrs Brown's eggs have been infusing in a coolroom next to $4500 of black French truffles.

Festival director Simon Wood says egg shells are porous and the truffles' "rich, earthy flavour goes right through them", giving a novel touch to dishes such as scrambled eggs.

At the festival, Mrs Brown will sell the infused eggs for $10 per half dozen, compared to $5 to $6 per half dozen her eggs normally sell for.

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